Olavo de Carvalho is a brilliant Brazilian intellectual who keeps closely focused on the origins of the far left movements that exist in Latin America and why they are so insidious. Aleksander Boyd at VCrisis spent some time with him, and a terrific, deeply thoughtful exchange of ideas between the two revolutionaries followed.

Carvalho attributes the new traction for nondemocratic leftism in the Americas to the writings of an Italian intellectual named Antonio Gramsci. In the ruins of communism’s demise in Eastern Europe, this Italian’s stock has risen, because his approach to Marxism is quite new and different from the old Leninist approach. Gramsci says that since Marxism cannot use economic arguments anymore as justification for its ideas, it must now use cultural ones.

That’s why Latin American Marxists have anachronistically sprung to life even as the rest of the world has ashcanned communism as an idea.

If you 1. read the interview 2. consider what’s happened in Latin American events – particularly the Hugo Chavez fake ‘revolution’ 3. reflect on it, then 4. It will all make considerable sense.

It is thought-provoking work and I intend to refer to this interview again at future dates due to its insight. The whole thing can be read here.